The 60 cm tall Xian’er can chant Buddhist mantras, can hold a conversation on the Buddhist topics displayed on his screen, and can move, responding to voice command.

...

Xian’er appears regularly on social media, and has more than 300,000 followers on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. He has also made appearances at robotics and innovation fairs in China including the World Robotics Exhibition in Beijing, but only rarely appears in the Longquan temple. Instead, they say, Xian’er spends most of his time meditating on a shelf in an office.

robots just do everything better. I had heard of an electric monk who was very good at believing stuff; in fact you could tell it what to believe, and he would believe stuff for you; leaving you to get on with whatever else you wanted to do.

But, unfortunately (?), robots do not suffer. Therefore, their presentation of Buddhist teaching is bound to be "by rote", not by genuine compassion (and certainly, not informed by the arising of true Wisdom).

Dalai Lama says that Buddhism passes from one warm hand to another. One doesn't have to be a Luddite to agree with that.

Oops, there went the lightness?

best!, All,

--Joe

p.s. maybe in PRC it's more politically (legally... ) acceptable for a machine to spread Buddhist teachings than for a person to try to do so, though. I don't keep close track of China's changing ways.

macdougdoug wrote::lol2: robots just do everything better. I had heard of an electric monk who was very good at believing stuff; in fact you could tell it what to believe, and he would believe stuff for you; leaving you to get on with whatever else you wanted to do.

I'd like a robot who drinks, smokes, scratches his private parts, let humans do all the work and uses profanity all day.